Unable to delete entries from keychain

Question

Unable to delete entries from keychain

I have been having trouble connecting to Outlook (which gets stuck in a login loop when I try to add an account) and all the advice recommends deleting the relevant entries from the keychain. Unfortunately, when I go to keychain access, the delete option is not available - it's greyed out, and right clicking then selecting delete does nothing. The entries there, at least for this, must have transferred when I brought things over my previous Mac, but I don't have the same problem with keychain access there. I don't have this connected to iCloud. Does anyone have other suggestions of why I cannot clear entries?

Note this is an M1 Mac - support suggested resetting PRAM, etc. but that seems to be irrelevant to this model.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Mar 26, 2021 4:03 PM

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Answer 1

ManJor

Community Specialist

Mar 28, 2021 2:06 PM in response to rebeccafromcanada

Hello, Rebecca!

After reviewing your post, it seems like you are having some issues editing and deleting some entries in your iCloud Keychain. We definitely understand how that can be a concern and we'd love to help. Let’s start our investigation by determining exactly when this happens. First, test for this behavior in safe mode: Start up your Mac in safe mode.

Next, see if this behavior persists in a second user account on your Mac. If you don't have one you can use, please follow these steps to make a test account that can be deleted later: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac.

Please let us know if this behavior persists in both of the above situations. Have a great day!

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Answer 2

MoonJ.

Community Specialist

Mar 31, 2021 8:49 AM in response to rebeccafromcanada

Thanks for getting back with us, Rebecca. It does sound like the issue is tied to your user account, since Outlook worked as expected. Good catch on that one. Trying this in safe mode will allow you to see if there might be something that automatically starts up on your account which could be causing this behavior. Please let us know what happens when you give that another try.

We'll be here to help. Cheers!

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Answer 3

Mar 31, 2021 5:21 PM in response to MoonJ.

Same thing: in Safe mode, I don't have the option to delete anything from the keychain. However, I was able to log in to Outlook with no problem and since it's now set up, I'm able to use it normally for the moment. I'm still not sure why I'm unable to remove things from the keychain.

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2021 4:17 PM in response to ManJor

Hello!

Thank you for this. I did something wrong when I tried to boot in safe mode so I'll try that again tomorrow. However, when I logged into the guest account, the problem with not being able to delete things did persist. (However, I set up Outlook on there and it worked fine, so whatever the issue is with that keychain is specific to my user account.)

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Unable to delete entries from keychain

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